Merry Cranberry Bread

Hope you had a good weekend! I did lots of baking this weekend so I'm a happy camper. Sweetie didn't mind, either, since one goodie was freshly baked barley wheat bread, this time baked in a loaf pan and toasted...well, except for the first couple of slices that were gobbled up still warm from the oven and needed nothing more than a touch of fresh butter.

Another baked good that was an unexpected hit was cranberry bread. For Thanksgiving dinner I had purchased two cans of cranberry sauce. One was jellied and one had whole berries. Due to the ravages of time my brain burped and the cranberry sauce never made it to the table on Thanksgiving. Some of the jellied sauce made it to the table with the leftover turkey, but I still had a lot of cranberry sauce sitting around.

Then I remembered a recipe that I had seen a number of times as I paged through the Fannie Farmer Baking Book by Marion Cunningham. Each time I thought that it would make a great sweet quick bread, but found that I was out of whole cranberry sauce. This time I was ready!

This moist, slightly sweet bread goes together pretty quickly if you have that whole cranberry sauce. I used a cup of whole wheat flour in place of one of the cups of all-purpose flour. It added a nuttiness that went well with the berries and walnuts. A key is to avoid over mixing, something that is true of most quick breads. I suspect that mine sank in the middle because I didn't mix it properly when I added the dry ingredients. I'd also recommend that you put a baking sheet near the bottom of the oven to catch any batter that spills over the sides of the bread pans. Very glad I did!

This recipe makes two loaves. The first one disappeared pretty quickly. The second is slated to be sliced for the Saturday baby shower, then the slices will be sandwiched with a cream cheese orange filling and cut into fingers. It should make a nice addition to the tea tray offerings. I hope to put up some photos on Sunday showing all the pretty tea things in use.